


Equilibristat

by AuthorinExile



Series: Balancing Act [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe of a Fanfiction, Body Horror, Burns, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Graphic Description, Graphic Violence, Major Character Injury, Mind the Tags, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 17:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorinExile/pseuds/AuthorinExile
Summary: A million choices, a billion tiny instances that determined your fate, and every single one of them somehow got fucked up.Sure, some of your choices lead you to those happy moments where you're surrounded by friends and peaceful, but all it takes is a split-second change for everything to go to shit.You can’t believe your luck.~~~~~~This is a collection of outtakes from the main works of the Balancing Act series. Like the summary might imply, this is the place where I post the worst outcomes of some of the situations there.None of this is canon for the main works!!This exists solely so I can get the non-canon alternate takes out of my head as I write.





	Equilibristat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An alternate ending for chapter three of Equilibrate.

Of course, the Imperial soldier from before is standing in your path, helping civilians out of the dragon’s range.

  
When the monstrosity lands, you _freeze up_.

  
You can’t move, can’t even think of moving. It’s like seeing an out-of-control carriage careen down the road toward you. It’s like being a rabbit and staring down a drawn arrow. It’s like being prey. It’s like…

  
It’s…

  
It’s like staring down a dragon.

  
The thing l _aughs_ , you _swear_ that’s a laugh, and exhales fire.

  
Time freezes and restarts at a crawl, like molasses being poured in the dead of winter but somehow even slower and certainly not as sweet.

  
From the corner of your eye, you see the soldier from earlier pushing a child into the arms of another man, hiding them both behind the meager shelter offered by the stone rubble of a ruined house.

  
The soldier lunges for you, but the sheer _heat_ of Dragonfire pushes him away, makes him instinctively dive for shelter.

  
Flame _envelops_ you.

  
For a moment, there’s heat--blistering, scorching heat that sends you to your knees, _shrieking_ in agony and clawing at your skin, as if that will make it _stop_ , as if there were _ever_ any escape.

  
It only lasts for a moment, a second at the very most, but for you, it is an eternity of torment.

  
You are on the ground, now, free of the flame but left with the evidence of it.

  
The dragon does not even lower itself to putting you out of your misery. It tilts its head at you and disappears into the sky, keen on ruining another as soon as possible.

  
But you don’t see that.

You  _can't_ see that.

  
You can’t see anything.

  
What remains of your eyes is boiling in the sockets and cascading down your ruined face, pooling in the holes where your cheeks used to be, slipping past your teeth and under the stub of your tongue, crawling its way down your throat.

  
Flesh bubbles and sloughs off of the bone, bubbling and scalding the earth in puddles of steaming, boiling viscera.

  
You twitch and claw at the earth around you, but it is not a conscious thought. It is little more than the dying spasms of your fried nerves.

  
Your blood boils in your veins, your bones are little more than charcoal, and what pieces of your musculature haven’t fallen away from your body have been cooked and burned and _destroyed_.

  
The few parts of your brain that did not instantly boil away, cooked inside your own skull, shriek and frenzy and panic even as the heat destroys all thought and consciousness and _it hurts,_ whatever distant part of you remains knows that even without nerves,  _it hurts so badly_ \--

  
Your vocal cords, though.

  
They are just whole enough that you _scream_.

  
You scream and shriek and cry and sob with no tears, no way to _make_ tears, no way to escape this  _nightmare._

 

You scream until Hadvar’s sword cleaves your skull in half and sends whatever remains of you into Oblivion.

**Author's Note:**

> Not totally happy with all of these, but some of them were begging to be written anyway. If I liked it that much, it'd be in the main story.
> 
> If there's anything you want to see an alternative chapter about, let me know in the comments below.
> 
> Or just tell me what you think. I like those comments, too.


End file.
